Pakistan

Yemenis demonstrate against immunity for Saleh, nationwide protests in US challenge Citizens United

  • Thousands of Yemenis protested on Sunday against an immunity law protecting  outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh from prosecution and demanded he be put on  trial for offences they say he committed during his 33-year rule.
  • More than 50 students from Tuscon High School walked out of class on Monday and marched toward Santa Rita Park in protest of the recent ban on Mexican American studies at TUSD schools.
  • In Egypt, dozens of employees at the state-run Nile News TV Channel started an open-ended strike Sunday at the Maspero building, as they protested policies still in place since Mubarak’s rule.
  • Truck drivers across Italy went on strike on Monday against increased fuel prices, while taxis also held a national protest over government reforms to increase competition, causing disruptions nationwide.
  • In Lebanon, severe electricity cuts fueled several protests Friday as residents and  lawmakers staged a sit-in in the mountain town of Aley and small groups of protesters blocked roads in the south of the country.
  • Beginning last Tuesday, about 100,000 teachers from 24,000 non-government primary schools in Bangladesh held a three-day strike to demand that they be brought onto the government’s payroll.
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Thousands of lawyers in Pakistan strike, Bhopal disaster survivors protest Dow’s sponsorship of the Olympics

  • Dozens of cars manned by Palestinians from the West Bank tried to leave Jericho on Tuesday morning in a non-violent protest action to protest and challenge the system of Israeli-only roads throughout the West Bank, but were stopped by Israeli forces, who blocked the four lanes entering and exiting the Palestinian city.
  • On Monday, survivors of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy staged a protest at a park as part of the international campaign to demand that the Organizing Committee of the London Games set to begin from July 27, cancel the sponsorship by Dow Chemicals.
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Somalis protest in solidarity with prisoners, strikes paralyze traffic in Belgium

 

The message written on this protester's hands reads: "Our demand is the trial."

  • Thousands of Yemenis marched toward the capital on Thursday to demand President Ali Abdullah Saleh face trial for killing protesters during 11 months of demonstrations against him and to denounce a new government that would spare him prosecution.
  • Several thousand Eyptian activists gathered in Cairo after Friday prayers today for a mass protest against the ruling military and its handling of a series of clashes between security forces and demonstrators that killed 17 people and drew international criticism.
  • In Somalia, residents of Sool’s provincial capital of Las Anod took to the streets and went on strike on Thursday, bringing the city to a standstill, to show solidarity with prisoners staging a hunger strike at the city’s main prison.
  • A group of asylum seekers who survived last weekend’s boat disaster off the Indonesian island of Java have begun a hunger strike after being moved to a detention centre where as many as 12 people are sharing each cell.
  • In Kuwait, police used tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, and smoke bombs to disperse a large protest on Monday by the country’s stateless people in Taimaa. Around 30 men who entered a hunger strike were arrested.
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Egyptian women hold fifth day of protests against military abuse, Chinese villagers win standoff against government

  • Dozens of Bahraini Shiite employees fired over pro-democracy protests rallied on Wednesday demanding a return to work, a day after authorities said 181 would be reinstated.
  • Thousands of angry Egyptian women joined a fifth day of protests in downtown Cairo to voice outrage over what they said was the military’s abuse and mistreatment of female demonstrators.
  • The leaders of the rebellious Wukon village in southern China have reached a tentative resolution with senior provincial officials after a tense 10-day stand-off, which saw the villagers erect blockades around all of its entrances–effectively living outside government control–to protest their lack of basic needs.
  • A group of women from the Ukrainian topless-protest group Femen recounted their ordeal in neighboring Belarus, where on Monday they were kidnapped, beaten and abused by local security officials for a protest in Minsk in which they bared their breasts to bring attention to President Aleksander Lukashenko’s crackdown on the opposition.
  • After six days of protest, armed with 97,000-plus signatures, queers in Seoul, South Korea got the result they were hoping for. The Seoul Municipal Council’s passage of a Students Rights Ordinance with all clauses intact, including ones that affect the well-being of queer students.
  • For the second time in two weeks, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich was temporarily drowned out by Occupy protesters as he made his final push to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. “Mic Check,” they announced, continuing, “Put people first!”
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South Korea sees thousandth weekly protest, a ‘human oil spill’ in D.C.

  • South Korean protesters calling attention to the women forced into sexual slavery during WWII reached their thousandth weekly demonstration on Wednesday. Marking the occasion, a statue honoring the victims was erected in front of the Japanese embassy.
  • Demonstrators opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline staged a ‘human oil spill’ in front of Speaker John Boehner’s office in Washington D.C. Wednesday.
  • Portugal’s top trade union confederation CGTP on Monday launched a week of protests against the government’s austerity policies.
  • Employees of the Lahore College for Women University in Pakistan held a boycott of classes for the second day on Tuesday, demanding better terms for school workers.
  • Thousands of taxi drivers in Guinea Bissau went on strike Tuesday to call for an end to police extortion.
  • Disabled persons in Athens held a rally on Tuesday to oppose further austerity measures being considered by the Greek government.
  • Inmates at seven Kyrgyzstan prisons coordinated a hunger strike on Tuesday to agitate for better living conditions and meals.
  • Around 200 Los Angeles high school students walked out of classes on Tuesday and marched several miles to stage a sit-in at district board meeting, decrying cuts to school budgets.
  • Thousands of public sector workers in Cyprus staged a three-hour stoppage Tuesday in protest over government moves to freeze salaries for two years as part of an austerity drive to avoid an EU bailout.
  • A network of progressive South Korean Christian groups began a four day hunger strike on Monday to protest vote buying and corruption in the country’s largest Protestant association.
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Arabs and Bedouins strike in Israel, tens of thousands demonstrate in Russia

  • Arab and Bedouin Israelis held a state-wide general strike on Sunday as several thousand demonstrators gathered at the Prime Ministry to express their outrage at a government plan that would relocate Negev Bedouins out of their homes into impoverished townships.
  • Bangkok, Thailand saw a rare second rally in two days Saturday as a throng of marchers engaged in a ‘fearlessness walk’ reiterated their objections to laws that punish those who speak out against the monarchy.
  • A flash mob erupted in a Pittsburgh Target on Saturday as Occupy organizers briefly flooded the store in protest of the company’s hiring policies.
  • In the Dominican Republic on Thursday, hundreds of activists rallied against the government’s practice of confiscating or annulling birth certificates for those of Haitian descent.
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Sit-in continues at Tahrir, millions in India close shop, high schoolers walk out

  • Protests were ongoing Sunday in Tahrir Square after thousands of protesters rallied on Friday for an end to the Army’s rule in Egypt.
  • Despite strict controls on public speech, Singapore saw a rare public demonstration on Sunday as hundreds of activists participated in the global “Slut Walk” movement, calling attention to violence against women.
  • Friday marked the seventh day of protests in Pakistan as demonstrators decried a NATO airstrike in Pakistani territory which killed 24 soldiers.
  • On Wednesday, a mass rally took place in Bulgaria as thousands demonstrated against austerity measures, including a government plan to raise the retirement age.
  • In India, several fired workers agitating for their union’s recognition were arrested Wednesday after protesting in front of a Hyundai plant’s gate.
  • Millions of shop owners in India closed their doors on Thursday, striking and marching in protest of a bill which would allow foreign superstores like Walmart to have greater access in their country.
  • In the United Kingdom, Wales was the center of one of the largest public sector strikes in a generation Wednesday as around 170,000 workers—including teachers—abandoned their posts in ongoing protests against government pension reforms.
  • In the Philippines, hundreds of inmates continued a hunger strike Thursday, instigating noise barrages to agitate for faster case disposition, the release of political prisoners, and to address other grievances.
  • Thousands of Greek workers participated in this year’s seventh general strike on Thursday, continuing their calls to end government austerity programs.
  • Students from three high schools in Seattle staged a walk out on Thursday to gather at City Hall in protest of a Washington state proposal to fill budget holes with cuts to education funding.
  • Building on a series of protests this month against Bank of America’s poor environmental record, a Thursday rally in Asheville, NC culminated in the arrest of several nonviolent resisters who wanted to call attention to BOA’s support of the coal industry.
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Experiments with truth: 11/2/11

  • Pakistani cricket star-turned-opposition politician Imran Khan drew as many as  100,000 people to a rally in Lahore Sunday, where Khan  lambasted the country’s leading political figures as well as the United  States.
  • It was announced today that a flotilla made up of a Canadian and an Irish ship is en route to Palestine to break the siege on Gaza.
  • Tens of thousands of protesters in the Yemeni  capital Sana’a took to the streets Sunday demanding the release of  fellow demonstrators arrested by government security forces since February.
  • On Monday, fresh demonstrations were held in Jayapura demanding Indonesia take formal and legal responsibility for ongoing human rights abuses in West Papua, most recently the brutal attack on the Third Papuan People’s Congress (KP3) earlier this month.
  • The abandoned Hotel Madrid, which was taken over by an unknown number of squatters on October 16 after a mass rally in the capital organized by the 15-M movement, opened its doors on Monday to the first person to take up the group’s stated strategy of “freeing up spaces for common use.”
  • About 100 people gathered outside the Michigan League Monday afternoon to protest Eric Cantor, the U.S. House of Representatives majority leader and a Virginia Republican.
  • Dressed in their colorful traditional attire, some 200 Wixáritari or Huichol men, women and children traveled 20 hours from western Mexico to protest in the capital last week to demand a stop to the activities of foreign mining companies in the high desert of San Luis Potosí in the central state of that name.
  • Last Friday, hundreds of indigenous leaders, fishermen and riverine people from the Xingu River basin who had gathered to permanently occupy the Belo Monte Dam construction site in a peaceful protest to stop its construction in Altamira, located in the state of Pará in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon were evicted.
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Experiments with truth: 9/14/11

  • About two-dozen anti-BART protesters marched along San Francisco’s  Market Street Monday evening in the fifth consecutive weekly rush-hour  demonstration organized by the hacker group “Anonymous.”
  • In India, around 7,000 residents from coastal areas of Idinthakarai and other villages observed a massive hunger strike on Sunday to protest against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP).
  • In Pakistan, dozens of squatters staged a sit-in on Sunday in a protest against the demolition of their houses on Saturday by district administration to clear the land for construction of a road.
  • In the Philippines, eight political prisoners, including a woman, started an eight-day hunger strike in Iloilo on Tuesday as part of a nationwide protest to demand the release of all political detainees in the country.
  • Almost the entire police force of a small town in southern Spain went on sick leave yesterday in a dispute over payments.
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Death squads and democracy: a hidden legacy of 9/11

With newly retired General David Petraeus sworn in as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency last week, we are reminded, as the New York Times put it back in April when he was appointed to the position, that this is only “the latest evidence of a significant shift over the past decade in how the United States fights its battles — the blurring of lines between soldiers and spies in secret American missions abroad.” This shift of the agency’s function from gathering “intelligence” (we wish) to carrying out murderous operations has been going on steadily, and we all know what it means: torture has been enshrined as a regular feature of our military enterprise. CIA personnel regularly torture prisoners, regularly cover up much, but not all, of the evidence for these heinous crimes against humanity, and have, up to now, been winked at by the public and Congress for the part that comes to light.

Of course, this shift intensified after 9/11, and the tenth anniversary of that horrific day has given us an occasion to really revisit what it means. We should be aware that no people can survive such degradation of their most basic values. When the CIA/US Army shifts more and more to paramilitary operations it shifts more and more out of the few safeguards that were erected around  modern militaries to prevent them from carrying out grave abuse. It makes them look more like the death squads of Central America and Colombia than a democratic institution.

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